The Week Ahead: Week 7, Nov 17 – Nov 23

Chasing points stinks. You’re fully aware of this because chasing wins from goalies in fantasy hockey or W’s from starting pitchers in fantasy baseball can be maddening. One of the follies fantasy hockey players might run into at this time of the year, at least for those of you in standard roto leagues (where there are games played limitations), is balancing chasing those points and trying to maintain your league’s games played pace. It’s even more difficult to restrain yourself if you find your drafted heroes well behind the leaders in your league’s current standings. Read more »

After an abysmal game in Detroit on Friday, the Chicago Blackhawks returned home Sunday night to play division rival Dallas Stars. The final period saw an explosion of goals on route to a 6-2 victory behind 6 different Hawks players adding a multi-point night.

The new lines constructed by Coach Q combined for 13 points and a power play goal from Brent Seabrook. Corey Crawford stood strong for the home team including surrendering 2 Dallas goals within 39 seconds. Kari Lehtonen was the victim to all 6 Blackhawk goals. Dan Carcillo, Michal Rozsival and newly called up Joakim Nordstrom were inserted into the lineup with Jeremy Morin and Dave Rundblad watching from above.

Two scary moments during the game when Trevor VanRiemsdyk was hit in the left leg with a shot and left halfway through the first period, not returning. Jonathan Toews almost lost an ear when Tyler Seguin was falling to the ice getting his skate up on captain serious, just kicking his helmet. Coach Q stated that TVR could be out “awhile.” Read more »

The Hawks skated into Joe Louis Arena on Friday riding a pretty impressive regular season unbeaten streak against the Red Wings. However, on this night, it was clear the home team had more jump from the get go.

As he’s been want to of late, Quenneville rolled out some pretty unusual lines, notably putting Versteeg on the first line and Hossa on the third.

1st period: Hawks get the game’s initial pp at 17:55. The first pp unit ran with both Keith and Seabs on the blue line opposed to having a forward back with Keith. Brad Richards is still on the 2nd pp unit so Coach Q is still showing some faith in our new 4th line center.

At 6:09 in the first the Wings capitalize on a terrible Versteeg turnover to score the game’s first goal. Read more »

The Chicago Blackhawks got three goals from the defensive corps to get out in front of the visiting San Jose Sharks Sunday night. The Hawks hung on to post a 5-2 victory at the United Center behind a solid effort from Corey Crawford to go with the first NHL goal for Trevor van Riemsdyk.

[editor’s note: The NHL changed the scoring on the Hawks’ first goal on Monday, taking it away from van Riemsdyk and crediting it to Kris Versteeg.]

First Period-The Blackhawks outshot San Jose 20-9 in the opening 20 minutes as Chicago defenders accounted for a trio of goals.

A nice hole by Johnny Oduya led to a scoring chance for Ben Smith in the slot. However, Logan Couture prevented Smith from getting off a shot. van Riemsdyk took a drop pass from Patrick Kane and sent a shot on goal that Antti Niemi smothered in the fourth minute. Read more »

The content will largely remain the usual moderately useful quality, but this week’s edition will likely appear more truncated due to the present author’s illness. Quite honestly I intended to sandbag this week’s edition and totally blow it off, but no sooner than five minutes after I intimated there would be no post this week, a heavy fisted knock from the front door revealed TTMI’s shadowy overlord, Chris Block, shorn to toe in nothing but a tunic and 24 eye black Doc Martens combat boots (feel free to burn that image into your mental hard drive), and his soupbones heavily taped. “No post this week, eh?”….while waiving heavily wrapped soupbones in a menacing manner. Let’s just get this over with. Read more »

A road trip to La Belle Provence seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. After losing 1-0 on Sunday night at the United Center, the Hawks adjusted their line up heading into Montreal on Tuesday. It sent a message to most of the Hawks as they skated their way to a 5-0 victory over the Canadiens.

Home town kid, Corey Crawford obtained his first shutout of the year and 11th of his career, making 27 saves. Jonathan Toews scored and early power play goal and the “fourth” line did the rest with Kris Versteeg, Bryan Bickell and Marcus Kruger combining for 4 points.

Patrick Sharp was injured in the third, being helped off the ice and did not return. Coach Q mentioned after the game that he would be “out for a bit”, but the team won’t know for sure until they return back to Chicago. Read more »

Corey Crawford made his return to the net in the Chicago Blackhawks game in Toronto Saturday night. It was his Maple Leafs counterpart, however, who was the story at the Air Canada Centre.

James Reimer stopped 45 or 47 Chicago shots to lead Toronto to a 3-2 victory over the Blackhawks. Brad Richards potted his first goal of the season and the Hawks power play was responsible for both goals. However, Reimer withstood 26 shots in the final 20 minutes to send the Blackhawks home with a loss.

First Period-The Maple Leafs gained an early power play in the third minute when Bryan Bickell tripped Sam Carrick. Chicago killed the penalty with little difficulty.

In the sixth minute, Jeremy Morin picked off a pass and headed to the net. His shot from the circle resulted in a rebound off of Reimer. However, Bickell’s second-chance attempt was also denied. Read more »

The Blackhawks got off to a quick start in St. Louis on Saturday night but then sank for the next thirty-eight minutes. So much so that even a dominant third period wasn’t enough to lift the visitor’s over the Blues.

Chicago got a power play tally from Patrick Sharp just sixty-two seconds into the game and a Kris Versteeg goal in the third than Sharp assisted on as well. But that was all the offense the Hawks could muster against Brian Elliott and the Blues as St. Louis took the first meeting of 2014-15 between these two rivals, 3-2 at Scottrade Center.

Coach Q went real wild with the lines on Saturday night, moving all 4 forward lines around. The defense was the usual top four with TVR playing alongside Rozsival on the bottom pairing. Read more »

Sunday night, I joined Krista, C.T. and “Forklift” from HockeeNight.com for our annual Blackhawks’ season preview “PuckCast.”

Of course, with the news coming down over the weekend, we spent considerable time breaking down the Nick Leddy trade as well as the controversial signing of Dan Carcillo. We also discussed Teuvo Teravainen, the formulation of the Blackhawks’ roster, Brad Richards already being demoted from off the 2nd line, prospects, the Manitoba Two-Banger and much much more.

In this week’s news, the Blackhawks have a highly-regarded NHL prospect.

In fact, this prospect could be in line to earn a spot on the Opening Night roster, but the team says they don’t know for certain.

The problem is the player missed a week of training camp and three preseason games. So, they need to see more of him.

Fair enough. Makes sense… In other news, the team is chose not to see the aforementioned player last night when the Blackhawks host the Montreal Canadiens in the final home game of the exhibition season.

Teuvo Teravainen, despite getting into only one game thus far due to injury, didn’t dress in the Hawks’ second-to-last preseason game against the Canadiens.

“We haven’t seen him a ton this camp,” Joel Quenneville said Wednesday morning when speaking to reporters about the 20-year old prospect. “We liked him in the game he played. We like him in practice. I thought he was fine at Notre Dame. We see progress to his game. It seems like he’s a little stronger.” Read more »